PERSONAL

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SLS, Considering a Counselling Course, Tin Whistle 3

10 months ago1,632 words

I'm still struggling with motivation, focus, general life stuff. I'm wondering whether to take an opportunity to start training as a counsellor...

(I likely repeat myself a lot in these personal posts, but it's not as if my life situation regularly fundamentally changes, and it does help to write them out, maybe.)

It used to be that I'd work on my current game every single day, but since that led to burnout fast, I've been trying to take the weekends off for the past, what, year or two? Longer? Typically I like to spend Saturday mornings doing creative stuff for myself, like composing music or working on whatever private side project I've recently been dabbling with.

Today, though, I'm just... I can't focus on anything. I've gone back and forth between at least half a dozen things - some productive, some not - but after about five minutes I feel that I have no motivation to really lock myself into the thing, to even start trying to get into the flow zone, or I think about all the other things I should be doing and feel paralysed, just end up staring into space for several minutes before switching to something else in the hope that goes better. Nothing has.

I've been like this for a while now. I stopped working on Atonal Dreams months ago so then I could focus on that faster-to-make side project, currently called Dreamons, but once it became something I had to do, I struggled to focus on it as much as I should have. I recently started a side project to that side project in the hope that I'd be able to make that even faster, but it's taken far longer than it should have to build the main structure (it's based on a private project I made in about a week, but working on this for-public-eyes version has taken more than a month, despite reusing most of the code). I'm mostly there now, but I just keep putting off actually posting about it (likely on Patreon) because of anticipation about a response that's at best lukewarm and at worst harshly dismissive and critical.

I end up spending a lot of my time wallowing in misery about my unpleasant life situation. Loneliness is what usually bothers me the most, though worries related to how I'll make enough money to even barely scrape by - if I ever manage to move out of my parents' house - are always there in the background.

I've had several professional women in various capacities trying to help me; huge chunks of my time lately have been spent on the phone. The Occupational Therapist, the Community Navigator, the Counsellor, my uni friend. Recently, a nurse called me from the cancer hospital for a checkup, and I talked about how I have no obvious neurological issues but a bunch of mental health ones, which led to her suggesting many things which I've already tried and they haven't worked, or which wouldn't be appropriate for me. Another woman called me from the charity I had counselling with, which led to another long call which was much the same; she suggested meet-up things I might try, but it sound like the only other attendees will be a handful of old men with learning difficulties. I'm putting in the effort, other people are giving me their time too, but what it usually leads to is realisations about how difficult my situation actually is.

I recently read about something called ∞ 'Crap' Life Syndrome ∞, or SLS, which is an unofficial diagnosis doctors give to patients behind their backs when their issues are obviously a direct consequence of their life situation. The naive view that underlies most mental health care (or at least the talk therapy side) is that if we do some tidying up of our inner world, if we change the way we look at things, our woes will mostly evaporate. And for people whose life is mostly in order, that might work. But would CBT work for someone in a concentration camp? Or a warzone? Some people suffer despite their life circumstances, and that's who therapy etc is designed for, while others suffer as a consequence of their life circumstances, and that's harder to really do anything about.



My mum recently found out from one of her coworkers about a local evening class for Counselling. That is, it's one of the steps you'd have to take to become a counsellor. It's apparently the same one that one of my uni friends is currently doing, though she's doing it online in her own time, while this one would be an in-person group taught over something like 12 weeks. It's at a place about a ten minute walk away, and the whole course costs just £200.

It seems like too good of an opportunity to miss out on, but my demons keep prodding me with doubts and insecurities. Who am I, mentally ill and loserly as I am, to help anyone with their mental health? What if my classmates are all young women who regard me as a creep and keep their distance? Or old mothers who I can't relate to? Or what if I meet someone I like but they find out I'm cancer-ridden and still live at home and they're repulsed by me? What if it's me, a bunch of women, and one hot guy (like my other friend's last counsellor apparently was), and all the women flirt with that guy while I'm ignored, like a yoga group I went to once?? They'll probably all be far more 'normal' than I am. I won't fit in. I'll only be rejected and disappointed and reminded of how much of an alien I am. Why try?

I mentioned the course to my step-dad on one of the rare occasions we briefly talked, and he seemed disappointed, even annoyed, that I'd lower myself to such an unimpressive role. He's the sort who measures his success in life by expensive possessions and exalted positions, the sort who'd aim to climb the ladder to the top, and he said I'm intelligent enough that it's a tragedy that I'm not using my gifts to go out and train to become a brain surgeon or something. Which is absurd for one, I know enough to know I'm not capable of that, but I also measure my success differently, and having some fancy, high-paying, high-stress job role holds no appeal for me at all.

If I could carve out a little life where I can spend most of my time quietly creating alone for a small, kind audience, but where I had maybe once- or twice-a-week obligations that got me out of the house and where I could have meaningful interactions with other people (not just business talk about money or water cooler chats about pop culture), maybe then I'd feel content, to the degree that my neurotic nature will ever allow me to be.

So training to be a local part-time counsellor who helps a handful of ordinary people deal with the stresses of their lives would...

Would it be enough? If I spent most of my time making creative stuff I could share online??

That's where my mind's been recently. Back and forth between feeling I might have found a rope out of the pit and doubt about whether I can - or should - even climb it. I definitely should apply to the course, probably, maybe, even if it's just as an excuse to get out of the house and interact with people. I know from experience that just spending time around others will drastically affect the kinds of thoughts I have at all...

The course would start in January, so hopefully I haven't missed my chance. I'll try to apply on Monday.



As I already mentioned, I've done more work on that not-a-game side project thing that I've yet to announce the name of. I was hoping to post about it on Patreon earlier in the week, but I suppose I've been distracted by this and the general mental health issues, especially the insecurities about what kind of feedback - if any - it might get. Hopefully I'll do that at some point in the coming days, rather than just going over and over it in my mind every day.

I've also had a strong urge to get back to Dreamons, after taking a few weeks off from that. I played and did a bit of work on it yesterday, but I might get back to it in earnest next week. We'll see. I do feel it has some potential, even if indie games are hardly a path to reliable wealth. At the very least, I'd like to get to the point with it where I could show people a playable demo.

(Oh good, I was able to sit down and focus on this for the hour it took to finish it!)



I was planning to end the post there, but remembered something:



That's the second set of Tin Whistle pieces I composed a couple of weeks ago and then forgot to upload. Maybe someone will get something out of it! I don't think I've even touched my own whistle since then though (also that sounds like a euphemism... which is also accurate. IS THAT TOO MUCH INFORMATION??).

I did post the first set on Reddit, but... well, I wrote out some longer rant about that here, but I'll summarise it by saying any associated feelings on my part are more depression-flavoured than anxiety-flavoured, and that I wonder if parents ever get frustrated when other people don't perceive their children to be as wonderful as they themselves do.